Now at 100M users, Instagram shows rumors of its decline are greatly exaggerated

Instagram has reached 100 million users, a nice, round number for the Facebook-owned photo app.

Rumors of Instagram’s decline have been swirling around the web ever since the service was bought by Facebook — a deal that was first announced nearly a year ago.

Since then, the service has also gone through a PR poo-storm due to changes to its terms of service, a move that some said had already cost Instagram 25 percent of its daily userbase.

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Both the acquisition and the TOS kerfuffle did see plenty of users straying to other photo-sharing pastures. But in spite of these rumors and persistent user backlash over the associated changes, Instagram said it wasn’t seeing any signs of slowing. “We continue to see strong and steady growth in both registered and active users of Instagram,” read a statement back in December.

And now, the service is putting the proof in its pudding with a celebratory blog post announcing it’s reached 100 million users — that’s monthly active users — up 10 million souls from this time last month.

In addition to that figure, the company also stated last month that Instagram brings in an average of 40 million photo uploads per day. Those photos get 8,500 Facebook likes per second and more than 1,000 photo comments per second.

Reflecting on the milestone, Instagram founder Kevin Systrom wrote, “Images have the ability to connect people from all backgrounds, languages and cultures. They connect us to aid workers halfway across the world in Sudan, to entrepreneurs in San Francisco, and even to events in our own backyards.

“Instagram, as a tool to inspire and connect, is only as powerful as the community it is made of. For this reason, we feel extremely lucky to have the chance to build this with all of you. So from our team to the hundred million people who call Instagram home, we say thank you. Thank you for sharing your world and inspiring us all to do the same.”